#BookReview: The Museum of Unusual Occurrence by Erica Wright

The Museum of Unusual Occurrence (A Psychic City Mystery) by Erica Wright
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook
Genres: cozy mystery, Gothic
Series: Psychic City Mystery #1
Pages: 240
Published by Severn House on April 7, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Welcome to the Museum of Unusual Occurrence—a place full of strange exhibits and even stranger murders. The first in the new Psychic City mystery series by talented author Erica Wright.

“Every small town thinks it’s special—That might be true, but this one actually is.”

Rational and cynical Aly Orlean’s life in her psychic hometown of Wyndale, Florida couldn’t be more hectic. It’s all about running her business, raising a teenage sister, sending out holiday greetings—and her new finding a killer.

For her Museum of Unusual Occurrence not only houses odd curiosities but now has a brand-new The body of Rose Dempsey, a local twenty-year-old, set up in one of the exhibits as if she has been ritually sacrificed.

With the police clueless, Aly is worried that this is a vicious warning for her and her solitary way of life. Fearing for her sister Merope’s wellbeing, she’s determined to find out why the killer murdered Rose and how her body was placed in Aly’s museum . . . But might the killer be someone hiding in plain sight?

My Review:

This looks like it should be a Gothic romance. Or a paranormal mystery. Or something in the middle, even if I’m not entirely sure what that middle would look like. Let’s just say that the cover has a certain vibe.

It begins as a mystery that might, or might not, be a Gothic mystery – even if the setting is utterly right – or ripe – for that.

The Museum of Unusual Occurrence reads like something out of Ripley’s Believe or Not tourist trap – or perhaps an out-of-the-way knockoff of one. Wyndale, Florida certainly seems like the place for it. Once upon a time, in the post-Civil War era, Wyndale became the center of spiritualist practices. There were a lot of people hoping to contact loved ones in the afterlife in the late 1800s, and Wyndale (along with its real-world counterpart, Cassadaga) acquired a reputation as a place where you could find a medium on every street corner, but if you were a medium – or anything else in that line – you could find a home amongst fellow practitioners and believers who wouldn’t automatically think you were crazy for your beliefs.

In the here and now, Wyndale uses its history as a spiritualist haven to attract tourists – and their money. Nothing fraudulent or illegal, just celebrating who they were – and still are – to keep the place going.

The museum that Alcyone Orlean inherited from her dad, the Museum of Unusual Occurrence, showcases the historical aspects of the town – and includes exhibits about the history of spiritual and other ‘unusual’ practices around the world. It’s a combination of labor of love and noose around Aly’s neck that supports both Aly and her younger sister Merope. The exhibits in the museum range from the authentically historic to the chillingly creepy to the hushed reverence of the museum’s library.

At least until the morning that Aly discovers a young and very recently dead woman INSIDE one of the display cases – posed like Snow White in her glass coffin just waiting for her prince. But no prince can wake this ‘sleeping beauty’ – and Aly isn’t looking for one to save her, either.

However, Aly can’t resist getting involved in the case. Not just because it happened inside her own home, but because one of her old high school friends is the lead detective on this big case in this tiny town, and he’s just sure that Aly can help him solve the crime if she does his ‘homework’ on ritual killings for him.

As a way for her old friends to get Aly out of her self-imposed exile, out of her still simmering grief over her dad, and out of her neverending funk over the mother that abandoned her and her sister and left 20something Aly to raise her high school age sister alone, it turns out to be the best worst idea anyone ever had.

Because Aly gets invested in the fate of #wyndalesnowwhite before she’s aware that she’s all in. And before she knows that the truth about the murder – and the girl left in her museum’s glass coffin – lies much closer to home than Aly ever imagined.

Escape Rating B: In a weird way – and there’s a lot of weird to go around with this one – my mixed feelings had mixed feelings. There’s a part of me that thinks the readalikes for this one are Alix Harrow’s Starling House and Tanya Huff’s Direct Descendant. The feeling all three stories evoke is similar, even though the “magic” in both Starling House and Direct Descendant is absolutely real, while the paranormal vibes in Aly’s museum are not – for the most part.

Certainly the mystery and the villainy in Museum are both due to entirely human motives and human agencies, even though Aly begins the story as the only skeptic in a town chock-full of believers. It ends with Aly’s acknowledgement that there are “more things in heaven and Earth” than are dreamt of in her philosophy.

There are at least two mysteries in this mystery. Well, there are two obvious mysteries. It’s not just who was the dead girl or even who killed the dead girl. It’s also who put her body in the museum case and how did they get in? Along with how do they KEEP getting in, leaving threatening messages and scaring Aly half to death?

Everyone in town seems to know a little bit of something – but Aly, skeptic that she is, can’t be certain whether their knowledge comes from the ‘other side’ or just being nosy neighbors on this one. Aly bets on the nosy neighbors – and she’s not wrong to do so. Everyone certainly knows more of her business than she’d like and she learns more of theirs than she wants.

The focus is on Aly’s deepening involvement with the case, with the fate of the dead girl, and with the way that her amateur investigation draws her out of herself and her self-imposed isolation. That she’s fumbling and stumbling along the way, that there are entirely too many things she doesn’t want to see, and that she gets led down the primrose path towards the wrong perpetrator isn’t a surprise.

That the case turns in the direction it does, however, makes for a dark and surprising ending. I was completely lost in Aly’s search for ‘whodunnit’ to the point where I wanted to flip to the end and just ‘get on with it’. Whether that was a result of too many red herrings or a shade too many convolutions in the mystery, well, I’m on the fence about that part. Aly’s flailing turned into a bit of a drag before the final curtain not merely fell but finally fell on the correct parties.

This story is labeled as the first book in the Psychic City Mystery series. The town of Wyndale was every bit as much of a character in this story as Aly, her sister, and their wayward mother, and the town certainly has plenty of characters in it whose stories would be fun to dig into. My curiosity is more than engaged enough to return for another visit if the series continues!

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